Quote Originally Posted by sapperfitz82 View Post
...Long way round, I believe that officer retention is a direct reflection of their IET. Consider that ROTC and USMA tracks both spend 5 yrs to get a new cadet trained to the point that he feels comfortable being a squad leader at most...They are told that the PSG will square them away when they get to their unit...I believe the answer is to invest a great deal more in the commission source training.
Well said, only thing I'll add is that over 45 plus years, I discovered early and annually reaffirmed that most 'bad' officers (yes, Virginia, they exist...) suffered from having no or a bad PSG.

Early service as a Marine showed me that the then Basic School graduates with 11 months of training and education on top of their pre-commission training were the best prepared LTs I ever met. Culminating service as a DAC rating four LTCs on an oversized and underworked Staff showed me that poor LTs did not make good LTCs...